Critical Conditions

Ten

“Brenda? Brenda?”

In the bathroom mirror I watched her. Her lips parted and she backed slowly away from me, feeling for the cool tile of the wall, edging her sculpted nails into the grout lines, putting distance between herself and the reality of the gun. Her complexion had paled to the same color as the off-white ceramic tile. I tried to imagine what it would be like to discover a handgun in your child’s bedroom and saw the answer in Brenda’s face: shock and horror and disbelief.

“Brenda, come on, let’s get out of here, go find a place to sit down.”

I took her hand and led her back through Merritt’s room to the landing at the top of the stairs, where a pair of ladder-back chairs flanked an elaborately painted hunt table. Meekly, she lowered herself to one of the chairs.

“Brenda, I’m so sorry. This must be yet another terrible shock for you.” Silently, I rebuked myself for how lame my words seemed, how they always seemed to sound in the face of the harsh winds of tragedy.

She moved her lips as though she wanted to speak, but no sound emerged; all she managed to do was shrug her shoulders in resignation, look plaintively back toward Merritt’s room, and start to cry.

I realized as I stood helpless that the house was growing dark. I flicked on a hall light and the brightness seemed to nudge Brenda from her stupor.

She spoke so suddenly and so rapidly, she startled me. I had trouble changing gears to keep up with her torrent of questions. “Why does she have a gun? Why does Merritt need a gun? Is she in some kind of trouble? Why is it in the bathroom? Why would it be there?”

My impulse was to say something perfectly inane like, “Kids today, who knows?” but caught myself enough to offer a less offensive platitude instead. I said, “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

“She’s my baby, my little girl.” Her words were slower now. After weeks of dealing with Chaney’s illness, she was so accustomed to the shock of trauma that it now energized her only briefly.

“Brenda, the gun in there? Does it belong to you and John? Do you recognize it?”

“No, no, no. God, no. We don’t own any guns. With the baby in the house, oh God, no. I wouldn’t think of it. Trent wouldn’t have it.”

I’ve been told I’m slow sometimes. But it wasn’t until that moment that the events of the previous thirty-six hours joined my current consciousness and I realized that Dead Ed Robilio had spilled a lot of blood recently and that no murder weapon had been discovered at his home. Although a connection between Merritt and Dr. Edward Robilio seemed remote, I feared the worst. Boulder, Colorado, just didn’t have too many pools of unexplained blood, bloody basketball uniforms, or bathrooms with mysterious handguns.

“Brenda, I want to go see something. Please wait for me here, okay? I’ll be right back.”

She nodded through her shock. If I had said I was going to be gone a minute to pick up some keys I’d left on Jupiter, she would have nodded at that, too.

I found my way back to the bathroom and turned on all the lights and bent close to examine the weapon, still resting on the towel. I was pretty sure the gun was coated with a not insignificant amount of dried blood. The caked, rusty tint covered not only the grip but also the blunt barrel.

I flicked the bathroom lights back off and returned to Brenda at the top of the stairs. I didn’t think she had moved a centimeter.

Brenda asked, “What? Did you find something?” Naive hope infused her tone, as though she expected me to come back with news that the weapon was really a toy and that Merritt was playing a cruel joke.

“Yes, I did. I went to see if there was any blood on the gun.”

“Is there?”

“Yes. There’s blood on the gun.”

“Oh, God,” she said, the vigor returning to her cadence. “What should I do? I can’t handle this now. I just can’t. I can’t handle any more anything. And I have to go to work. I can’t miss any more work. I just can’t. And then I’m spending the night with Chaney. It’s my night with Chaney. And Trent? Oh, God, poor Trent. What did she do? Merritt, damn it, what did you do?” The words spilled out smoothly, like a child down a slide.

Brenda cried again and then her muscles tensed as she tried to contain the pressure of her agony. Tendons appeared to burst through the smooth surface of her skin and I thought her neck was so taut and constricted she wouldn’t possibly be able to breathe.

“Brenda, look at me.” I used my softest voice but tried to imbue it with determination and authority. Lauren had once told me when I used it with her that it was one of my sexiest tones. I never understood that.

Brenda raised her eyes to mine.

“This isn’t just a family problem anymore. I think what you need to do right now is call your husband and tell him what it is that we found.”

“You’re right, I need to tell Trent about this. I do, right? Don’t I?”

“Yes, you need to talk to your husband. Then you need to call the TV station and tell your boss you won’t be in tonight. I can do that for you if you would like; I’ll just explain that it’s something about your daughter. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“I’m supposed to tape tonight. It’s a story I’ve been working on. But I can’t do that now, no. Yes, would you call them for me?”

“Of course.” I wanted her to face me. Her eyes were fixed on the stairs, as though salvation were coming from that direction. “Please look at me, Brenda. After we do those other things, I think we need to phone the police.”

“The police? Call the police? You think Merritt’s done something wrong, don’t you? Something with that gun in there?”

“Yes. I guess I do think that’s possible.”

“And you think, what, that she feels terrible about whatever it was and that’s why she tried to kill herself?”

“It’s a simple explanation. It may not ultimately be correct, but it’s a reasonable place to start.”

“You want me to call the cops on my own daughter?”

“Well,” I said, steeling myself for her reaction, “actually, I’m thinking we should call your brother-in-law and ask him for some advice. He’ll know what to do.”

“What?” Her face was as incredulous as if I had suggested she call the White House and ask the First Lady for counsel on how to handle Merritt. What would you do if you found a bloody gun in Chelsea’s bedroom?

“I said I think you should call Sam.”

“You know my brother-in-law? You know about-? You know Sam and Sherry?”

In my face she probably saw a mixture of acknowledgment and confusion.

“How do you know Sherry and Sam? Are you friends with them? Goddamn it, you should have told me.”

“I know Sam, not Sherry. We’re friends. It started off as a police thing a few years ago, but since then we’ve become friends. I barely know Sherry.”

Brenda made a series of funny little popping sounds, rapidly expelling air from between her closed lips. I wondered if it helped her think.

“But he told you about…that Merritt was his niece, that I’m his sister-in-law, that-you know?”

“No, no one told me. Sam and I stumbled over the connection last night. We went to a hockey game together, and he started telling me about some personal things, some family things. Chaney’s situation came up-”

“And you pieced the rest together?”

“Yes. We both did.”

“And he told you about the…division between my sister and me?”

“He told me there was a problem, but he didn’t go into any details about it.”

“But you know enough to understand that calling my brother-in-law for help isn’t the most uncomplicated choice that I could make right now?”

“Yes, Brenda, I realize that. But if I were in your shoes-and I admit that it’s hard for me to imagine what your shoes must be like right now-with what we found, I would certainly want Sam to be the first one to look in Merritt’s bathroom and in that box under her bed. If it’s not Sam, it’s going to be some faceless cop who doesn’t care about Merritt. Sam cares. I don’t know how well you know him, Brenda, but I really trust him to know what to do, and to do what’s right.”

Brenda ignored my vote of confidence in Sam. She asked, “Do the police have to know? Do they?” Her voice rose with challenge.

“What do you-?”

“Do they have to be notified? I mean, let’s think about this carefully. Is it a crime to have bloody clothes under your bed? Is it a crime to have a gun in your own bathroom? Why do we have to call the police at all? I don’t see any crimes anywhere. Do you?”

“Are you saying you don’t want the police to know about the bloody clothes and the gun?”

“I’m not sure what I’m saying. What’s the crime here? What do the police need to know? My family is suffering about all we can suffer right now. Actually, I would have said that this morning, but I never imagined…you know, I don’t think I want to invite any more misery on my girls or on Trent. What if I don’t call the police? What if I just throw everything away, get rid of the gun? I’m not obligated to talk to the police.”

“Brenda, do you really mean what you’re saying? Do you realize what the implications would be? You would be destroying evidence.”

Her denial was becoming more palatable to her the more she discussed it. “Evidence of what? Why not? You can’t say anything to anyone. You’re a therapist. What if I just clean everything up, find someplace to dump it? Life goes on with no increase in the misery quotient.”

I wasn’t about to volunteer to be Brenda’s accomplice. “I’m Merritt’s therapist, Brenda. Not yours. And I would have to think about it some more, but I doubt that our conversations here, today, are covered by therapeutic privilege. I’ll be as clear as I can be right now. I strongly recommend calling Sam. Merritt could be in much more serious trouble than you and I imagined earlier.”

Her eyes looked betrayed. “You’ll call Sam even if I don’t?”

I shrugged. “First, I’ll take a few minutes to consider everything that’s happened tonight a little more rationally, but yes, in the end I think I might. The point is that you should call him.”

She seemed to be considering what I said I might do while I was having second thoughts about whether I would actually do it. She nodded twice, assuring herself of something or reminding herself of something.

“I’m…a little out of touch,” she said, managing a self-conscious smile. “With the news, I mean. I’ve had a few little things on my mind distracting me the last few days. I’ve paid no attention to the rest of the world. Is there…has there been something that happened recently, a crime, something specific, that you’re worried Merritt might be involved in? A shooting? I guess I’m asking if there’s been a shooting. Something I should know about, but don’t.”

I found it ironic that Brenda, a reporter, was out of touch with the news. I had hoped to not have to go into yesterday’s crime scene with her. “Yes, Brenda, there was a shooting. The victim was found yesterday. It’s in today’s papers.”

“I haven’t seen today’s papers. I’ve been with Chaney. The shooting was in Boulder?”

“Yes.”

“Yesterday? Then the timing is wrong. She’s been in the hospital since-I’ve lost track of days-since Saturday, right? I mean, the shooting couldn’t have happened before Merritt took the drugs, could it?”

I thought about the decomposing body of Dead Ed and the air-conditioned study and Sam’s comment about how much more noxious the smell could have been. “I don’t know that the coroner has determined time of death. But the police were thinking sometime Friday. Close enough that it’s impossible to rule out Merritt.”

“No arrests yet?” Her voice seemed to be coming out of a long tunnel.

“Not that I’ve heard about.”

“Who was it? Who was shot?”

“A doctor across town was shot in his own home.”

Her face flushed. “Do you know his name?”

“Yes, I do. His name is Edward Robilio.”

She looked like she’d been slapped. “Oh, my God.” She covered her mouth in her hands. “No! Did you say Dr. Robilio? It can’t be. No, it can’t be.” Her lips pulsed as she expelled another long series of tiny puffs of air.

I misjudged Brenda’s shock over the victim’s identity. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you knew him.”

She pulled one hand from in front of her face and waved me off, as if we were playing charades and I wasn’t even close to guessing what her pantomime was supposed to mean.

She said, “Dr. Robilio is dead?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Murdered?”

“It appears so.”

“Dear God in heaven, I don’t believe it. Merritt, Merritt, Merritt. Oh my dear baby, what did you do?”

“Brenda, what do you mean? Do you know Dr. Robilio? Does Merritt?”

She shook her head and waved her hand as though she could erase the words she had spoken from midair. “Nothing. No, I don’t know him. Merritt doesn’t either. I didn’t mean anything. Nothing.”

I pressed her to no avail.

With the mention of Dr. Robilio’s name, Brenda stopped protesting and didn’t continue to question the wisdom of including Sam in whatever it was that was evolving under her roof. She did make it clear that she wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the repercussions that would rock through the family once Sam became involved.

I placed the call. We moved downstairs to the living room to await Sam’s arrival.